


Red Herring

by gardnerhill



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural, Community: watsons_woes, Gen, Horror, Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-20
Updated: 2013-04-20
Packaged: 2017-12-09 00:42:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/767988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gardnerhill/pseuds/gardnerhill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Why Watson never wrote about Holmes pursuing the most notorious murderer of their time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Red Herring

He had correctly deduced the identity of the man who'd sent the notes to Scotland Yard – the one who'd given himself the poetically macabre sobriquet that was now the terror of London. Hiram Dickerson: A feeble-minded man living with his invalid mother; spent his time reading Poe and Shelly; as dangerous as a mouse. He'd bawled like an infant when he'd been arrested for interfering with police work, and a scolding from Lestrade had ended the letters.

But women continued to be slit to pieces in Whitechapel, bodies laid out with surgical thoroughness.

Now, at the end of the dock, he stared down the actual culprit. He had felt a mixture of terror and anger dealing with the Hound of the moors, but the only thing roiling in him now was icy purpose.

A mountain of black fur, blue-white eyes, and claws like scimitars. It gaped, revealing a throat he could walk down without touching the hand-span teeth that lined it. Such a thing, looming through the ghastly fog, would be only a nightmare image, and by the time its victim realised that it was real it would strike.

It bunched itself in preparation for its attack.

He spoke two words, clearly and distinctly, before the creature.

"Forgive me."

The first shot went between the thing's eyes, the second down that gaping maw. Ice-eyed, Holmes continued to shoot even as it dwindled, paled, returned to its original form.

The final silver round went through John Watson's heart.

**Author's Note:**

> For the Watsons Woes July 25 2011 prompt (the supernatural).


End file.
